This summer, Nars has released the Adult Swim collection. Never afraid of a little edge, Francois Nars had added some quirky–yet surprisingly workable–eyeshadow duos to his line. One is Nars Lost Coast ($35), a duo that excels because of its subtleness. This is All About Eve with a twist because the effect is brightening, illuminating, and enhancing of one’s own natural beauty.

This duo has a soft brown-beige and a cool soft lavender. This one is very easy to miss-but don’t. The magic is in the application. It doesn’t get any more daytime-friendly. Other makeup companies just don’t do this enough–Nars seems to know how to design colors that do not look like they should work together, yet somehow do in a really beautiful way.

Here is Nars Lost Coast applied lightly on Liz. Here, she simply applied the beige shade, then added the pink shade directly over the beige:

This adds a touch of mauve shimmer to Liz’s lids, which is both flattering, simple, and sort of genius:

Nars Tropical Princess ($35) is a high-metal modern duo that combines silver-white and chartreuse. Okay, this is going to sound odd but ever since I’ve seen a punk revival, I’ve been hoping for a really good chartreuse. You know, there are days when I just get really really tired of rules, in general. Tropical Princess is remarkable for its formulation–in other lines, shades this light tend to look cakey or frosted. Somehow, the pigment in Tropical Princess stays true-to-texture with a super-light coating of powder. It seems a little magic, but I suspect that Francois Nars was very precise and demanding in this formulation. Tropical Princess does some amazing things with its high-reflectivity with a remarkably thin layer of powder. Something about this formula is just right for using a very subtle touch of this electric shade.

This one is pure fun. Tropical Princes in the light:

Nars did a gorgeous video using this duo–really, if you need a touch of metal in your makeup wardrobe this is truly a “best in class” beautiful and unusual duo of this summer.

rated r is displayed in the spot where it should be… makes no sense seeing as the ad featuring tropical princess is there (with the green shadow up to the model’s brows) and then just some of the collection is there. when i asked where the duo was or when it was coming, they pointed me to this one and i had to tell them that rated r is certainly not part of the new collection and has been out for a long time.

I wasn’t expecting Lost Coast to look like so dreamy perfect on the lids. I was expecting the liliac to be frostier but it’s pigmented enough to give the right hint of grey to soft brown color in the pan. Oh Nars shadows… they did it again.